


The Lady's in Love with You

by rixie_rhee



Series: In the Mood [5]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 06:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12721515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rixie_rhee/pseuds/rixie_rhee
Summary: Nix lets out another huff. “Thanks.” He pauses and this time the silence is companionable and not awkward. “You’re a good friend.” The last word is distorted by a yawn. “Now shove the hell over.”Dick moves over, maybe a millimeter. He yawns, too, and then Nix yawns again and they both laugh in that way that’s more a movement in the shoulders than any kind of sound. You find humor where you can.“You need a girl.”“Someday. They’re in short supply here.”





	The Lady's in Love with You

“That woman openly adores you.”

“She does, doesn’t she?” Nix smirks into his lap, where his mittened hands rest. His jaw pushes forward, he looks smug, self-satisfied.

“She came all the way out here in the cold just to see you.”

“Nah, she had all that stuff to give out.”

“I think that was an excuse.”

“No, Rissy likes to be generous. She hates to think of anyone being cold or hungry. She’s tender-hearted.”

“Fine. It was just _mostly_ an excuse.”

“That might be true.”

“If not for you, she could have given all that stuff to someone else and stayed warm doing it.” Dick pauses to tuck the blanket tighter around himself. “She’s a nice girl, Nix.”

Nix sighs and his breath plumes even inside the foxhole. He’s hip-to-hip with the best friend he has. They’re submerged in the half-light and still cold, but warmer than they would have been otherwise. “Yeah, she’s a wholesome girl from the Midwest. I don’t know what she sees in me.”

This earns no response but side-eye from Dick.

“Okay, she _was_ a wholesome girl from the Midwest.” His chuckles are muffled in his scarf. Dick shakes his head and Nix continues. “I’ll tell you, though, that I wouldn’t have done that with anyone else. She wouldn’t have either.”

“What are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“Her. It’s been months, Lew. I like her, she’s great, but what are you going to do--”

“I’m not playing with her.” His voice is sharp and Nix tells himself that Dick has no idea he’s touched on a very sore spot. No one knows about that little debacle, about the night he convinced himself that Rissy’d be better off without him.

“I didn’t say you were.” Dick’s voice is mild, but there is a hint of reproach in there somewhere, or at least, Nix thinks he hears one.

“I never was, not even in the very beginning. I love her, Dick. I’d marry her. I’d marry her right now, but I can’t and I know it and she knows it and we both know why. Okay? I love her and I can’t marry her and I can’t leave her alone and it’s impossible. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Oh.” The awkward pause draws out, spinning in silence. “Well, I suppose that makes the difference if it’s like that.”

“You have no idea.” Nix draws his flask from his pocket and takes a long swallow. “When I married Kathy, it was a mad rush, everything was happening, and well…” Nix’s hands gesture in the frigid air as his voice trails off. “And now here we are, and it never fucking ends and Rissy makes it all stop.” He shrugs and the movement is exaggerated under all his layers. “She loves me for my own sake. She loves me because of the way I am and not what I have.”

“There’s no accounting for taste.”

“No shit. I don’t understand it either. She’s not perfect, but she’s pretty damn close.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” The flask tips up again, a tiny rivulet escapes Nix’s lips. Rissy would have darted in and kissed it away, but she isn’t there to do it. The whiskey is cold on his chin, as close to freezing as it can get and it stings. “What do you want to know?”

“How did you know?”

“That I love her? I spilled whiskey on her foot and she laughed. That was how we met. And then one shitty, shitty day I was--” Nix’s mittened hand waves again, “I realized I wanted her. She sat with me and I didn’t want to move. I want to protect her, I want to keep her safe. I just want to be around her. She makes it better. She’s the only still thing.” He does not say ‘other than you’ because even though it’s true, that’s not something you can say to your friend, not sitting together in the dark. Not ever, really.

“And how did you know that she--?”

“That she felt the same way? The day this happened.” He gestures to the place where the burn mark used to be. “I just knew. It’s easy to see it now, and it was probably there for a while, but that day--” He shrugs.

“I was worried about you, too.” Oh, there it is. Dick’s really saying that he loves Nix, too. In a very different way, of course, but it’s also another one of those things that you know and understand without talking about it.

“Yeah, but you didn’t knock me over, climb into my lap, and kiss me all over my face in front of a room full of people.”

Dick makes a face in the semi-dark. “No, I didn’t.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Right.”

Another gulp and a sigh. Nix traces the three pink stitches worked into his mitten. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do or what’s going to happen, so I try not to think about it, Dick. What she and I have is real, if that makes sense. I know I can’t go home back to the way things were, but who even knows when this’ll all be over and even then--”

“Yeah.” Nix tips the flask towards him and Dick puts his hand up and shakes his head. This nonverbal exchange has happened many times before, almost always with the same results. Confronting your own mortality is thirsty work, for Nix at least.

“That’s probably why today--”

“Don’t tell me about it!”

“I wasn’t going to tell you about it. Jesus, that’s between her and me. Despite what you might think, we’d really rather you weren’t there. It’s not my fault if you don’t wait after you knock.”

“It was the middle of the afternoon, Nix. And the first time that happened, I didn’t even know she was there. She wasn’t _supposed_ to be there.”

“The girl likes me. A lot.” One side of Nix’s mouth lifts and he thrusts an elbow into Dick’s ribs. “It doesn’t only have to be at night. And, yeah, it’s really fucking good--don’t worry, I’ll spare you the details--it’s really fucking _great_ , but it wasn’t ever about getting her into bed.”

Side-eye again and this time Nix throws his head back and laughs from his belly. “Really, I swear. That’s not what today was, either. It’s just the easiest way to be close. She might openly adore me, but I am completely, totally, helplessly, desperately, pathetically in love with her.” The grin melts away from Nix’s face and he turns toward Dick. “That can’t be wrong, can it? It can’t be wrong to want something good in the middle of all this shit. It seems like the worse sin would be not to love her.”

“I think you both deserve to be happy.” Dick settles back against the dirt and adjusts his blanket. He is very close to Nix; space is limited and it is far below freezing.

“Very diplomatic. It’s funny. Sometimes she’s a handful,” Nix shakes his head slowly and lets out a little huff, “and sometimes it seems like she’d belong with someone more like…”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you know, someone who’d take her to church and who has all those wholesome, all-American values. Not you, but someone like you, maybe.” He pauses. "We couldn't be friends if you stole my girl." He knows that would never happen, though. No, somehow he's found two people who love him beyond reason, even if he doesn't understand how or why either one chose him.

“You’re a good man. She sees it and I do, too.”

Nix lets out another huff. “Thanks.” He pauses and this time the silence is companionable and not awkward. “You’re a good friend.” The last word is distorted by a yawn. “Now shove the hell over.”

Dick moves over, maybe a millimeter. He yawns, too, and then Nix yawns again and they both laugh in that way that’s more a movement in the shoulders than any kind of sound. You find humor where you can.

“You need a girl.”

“Someday. They’re in short supply here.”

“You can’t keep cuddling up to me.”

“My hypothetical girl would smell better than you.”

“Hopefully she’d have less facial hair.”

“I’d like to think so.”

Nix shuts his eyes and pulls his hands under the blanket, which he tucks under his chin. “You should be happy, too.”

“So should we all.”

“Yeah, so should we all.”

* * *

 

They fall asleep in a deep hole in the ground, under a tarpaulin. The tarp is covered with a fine layer of snow and lets in trickles of arctic air. Still, they sleep as deeply as soldiers can until Dick wakes up in the night. He’s startled to find himself almost warm.

Nix is wrapped around him. Somehow, he’s lost his mitten amid layers of cotton and wool and his bare hand has found its way into Dick’s blanket and inside his coat. Nix is stroking Dick’s belly, rubbing his chest. His lips are barely an inch from Dick’s ear, and he’s muttering in his sleep. “C’mere, c’mere honey. Love you, c’mere.”

When Nix buries his face in his neck, when his lips graze his throat, Dick wrenches up and pushes him away. He lets out a half-disgusted and half-amused groan. For his part, Nix rolls over and curls into a tight ball. He could sleep through anything. He’s impossible, and apparently affectionate in his sleep.

It’s still dark, there are still at least a few hours before he needs to be awake. Dick heaves a heavy sigh and moves back closer to Nix, making sure his blankets are around him tightly enough to keep out any wandering hands. He wraps his scarf around his throat, too, and pulls the collar of his coat up. Before long, he’s sleeping again. You get your sleep when you can, too.

* * *

 

Years later, he tells the story of the time Nix kissed him and called him honey. Rissy’s drinking lemonade with one hand on her swollen belly; she’s curled against Nix’s side and under his arm. She tries to laugh and swallow at the same time, the result is that she starts to choke and spits a mouthful of lemonade into Nix’s lap. Dark droplets stain his pants and she sputters out an apology.

Nix shakes his head and spreads his hands before he pats his wife soundly on her back. When she has control of herself again, Nix wipes the tears from her face with his thumb.

Two small Nixons play on Dick’s lawn, along with one even smaller Winters. On the covered porch, Nix and Rissy are on the swing, her bare feet are tucked under her. There are pots of daisies: oxeyes, and gerberas, and blue marguerites, as well as the lowly common daisy. Dick leans back comfortably in his white slatted rocker. The chair beside his empty and the table between hold more terra cotta pots, an assortment of glasses, and the sweating tin pitcher of lemonade. It is tart and sweet as well, and it does not sting your lips at all.

Dick’s wife, his girl, comes through the screen door with a plate of cookies and three pairs of small feet clamber up the porch steps. The cookies are chocolate chip, all-American, and still warm from the oven. There are also Mason jars to catch fireflies in later. The holes are already in the lids. They’re all punched inwards, leaving no sharp edges to catch little fingers.

“I never knew, Lew,” Rissy murmurs and she stretches up to kiss Nix’s jaw. His hand rests over hers on her belly. Over her head, Nix watches as Ethel’s fingers slip under Dick’s collar. It’s a small gesture, a tiny intimacy that Nix is very familiar with himself, and he is glad to see that Dick has someone to love and who loves him back. He sees the small smile Dick gives his wife when he looks up into her face and the way she looks back down at him. That’s when Dick’s glance catches Nix’s.

Nix winks at his friend who winks back.

We all deserve to be happy.

So do we all.


End file.
